Instinct (1999)

Take a bit of Gorillas in the Mist and Shawshank Redemption and you have a pretty solid basis for Instinct, a drama about an anthropologist/primatologist who left behind civilization and his family to study mountain gorillas in Africa and comes back seemingly insane and a murderer. Anthony Hopkins stars as said individual, at times catatonic and others erudite, locked away in a prison that should have been closed years ago. Cuba Gooding, Jr. stars as a ambitious Psychiatrist who at first wants to study the unbalanced man for his own professional gain but then grows fascinated by what could have drove a scientist to violence. What follows is that exploration-trying to reach the man who grew to shun humanity-including his own daughter-and a subplot about bringing some humanity to a place bereft of it. This is NOT Silence of the Lambs, and at times Cuba is given the difficult task of carrying the film. Sometimes slow, clunky and even forced, the "good" apes vs "evil" humans story strains and lurches along, well-meaning but a bit breathless by the conclusion. Some violence, but not gratuitous, and not all that hard to follow, Instinct just was an OK film that's not a feather in anyone's hat that had starred in it.

Erik M.